78% of business professionals are up for meetings in the metaverse

A study claims 78% of business professionals would participate in more immersive experiences such as the metaverse as opposed to boring old video conferencing.

The study commissioned by networking systems and software firm Ciena surveyed 15,000 business professionals, and 78% of them reckoned they would participate in more immersive experiences like the metaverse for work. 87% would feel comfortable doing formal work meetings, such as getting told off by HR, in a virtual reality environment, while 71% ‘can imagine’ their company introducing virtual reality into work processes.

But if you’re going to have that meeting with marketing in the metaverse as opposed to, say, a room, then you’re going to need yourself an avatar. 35% of the surveyed workers said they would choose an avatar that reflects their real-world self, while 22% would choose an ‘idealistic version’, and 10% would pick a pop culture figure. Which could get confusing for meetings within in the entertainment industry.

“Clearly, the business world is ready to move to the metaverse and start using enhanced reality tools for collaboration and innovation,” said Steve Alexander, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Ciena. “Network reliability may be seen as a barrier to making this possible today, but service providers know the demand is there and are already investing and testing to make networks faster, smarter and bring them closer to the user.”

“We will continue to hear talk around what the metaverse is or could be in the coming months and years, but none of the exciting use cases can be achieved without a robust underlying network, laced with the latest and greatest technologies that support the ultra-low latency and high bandwidth that enhanced reality demands.”

Ciena is obviously pushing the idea that if you want the metaverse, you’re going to need the services of firms that do network stuff, like it does. And there’s some logic in the idea that as so many more office workers are now parked in the own homes beavering away that technology is developed to help improve communication and collaboration. And there’s no sense in being a luddite about it all – in 100 years time we’re hardly going to be still pinging people on Teams or waiting to be let into a Zoom meeting.

But with all things metaverse it’s never quite clear what it is its proponents are talking about exactly. Mark Zuckerberg seems to think it’s going to redefine everything and looks like he’s pivoting the entire Facebook (sorry Meta) empire towards it, but can only manage to show us a low grade avatar of himself sitting on a beach as he looks about from within his VR goggles. It’s hard to know what to do with that.

Maybe before long your annual review will be conducted within a virtual moonbase as your boss assesses your performance within his giant robot dinosaur avatar, as you take notes in the form of Kanye West. Who knows, but as we’ve pointed out before, a little more ‘show’ and little less ‘tell’ – as they teach writers – would go a long way to helping the rest of us understand what it is we are supposed to be so excited about.

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